Email bounce rate calculator
Email bounce rate is bounced emails divided by emails sent, times 100: 35 bounces from 1,000 sends is 3.5%. Enter your numbers above to get the hard bounce, total bounce and complaint rates, compared with the limits sending platforms publish. Brevo's 2% is the lowest published bounce line; Google publishes no bounce percentage, only a 0.3% spam complaint line.
Permanent failures: the address or domain doesn't exist.
Temporary failures such as a full mailbox or a deferral.
From your platform or Google Postmaster Tools.
- Hard bounce rate
- 3.5%
- Total bounce rate
- 3.5%
- Delivered
- 965
- Complaint rate
- –
Above Brevo's 2% line, the lowest published. Fix the list before sending to it again.
Against published bounce lines
- Brevo 2%hard bounces above this can suspend campaigns or the accountOver
- HubSpot 5%hard bounce rate in a month at which the account may be suspendedUnder
- Instantly 5%default auto-pause for a campaign, after 200+ sendsUnder
- Amazon SES 5%account placed under review (10% may pause sending)Under
- Postmark 10%must stay below this or sending is suspendedUnder
Google and Yahoo publish no bounce percentage. Their sender guidelines set a spam complaint line instead: below 0.3%, ideally below 0.1%, measured against mail that reached the inbox.
Next step
3.5% hard bounces is over the published line at Brevo. Clean the list before the next send.
35 addresses bounced, and the rest of that list has more of the same. A mailbox check finds the dead ones before they count against you.
- Drop your list as a CSV
- See its rows, duplicates and bad formats, free
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Sample result
A 3.5% hard bounce rate on 1,000 sends is above the lowest 2% platform line.
- Hard bounce rate
- 3.5%
- Total bounce rate
- 4.5%
- Delivered
- 955
What this means for you
Bounces this high can get a sending account paused, so clean the list before the next send.
- Hard, total and complaint rates at once
- Checked against five platforms' bounce lines
- Complaints measured on delivered mail
- Each line linked to the vendor's help page
- Bounce rate
- Complaints
- Thresholds
By SimpleVerifier Team · Last updated · Runs in your browser; nothing you paste is sent to us
How do I calculate my email bounce rate?
- Enter the number of emails sent in the campaign or period.
- Enter hard bounces (permanent failures). Add soft bounces and spam complaints if you have them; both are optional.
- Read the rates and the comparison list. Each line links to the platform's own help page.
- If you are over 2%, clean the list before sending to it again rather than waiting for a platform to pause you.
Example
- You enter
- 1,000 emails sent, 35 hard bounces, 10 soft bounces and 1 spam complaint.
- You get
- A 3.5% hard bounce rate and 4.5% total, with 955 delivered and a 0.10% complaint rate. The hard rate is above the lowest published platform line, 2%.
- Limits
- No limit; runs in your browser.
What is the email bounce rate formula?
Hard bounce rate = hard bounces ÷ emails sent × 100. Sixty hard bounces from 1,000 sends is 6%. The total bounce rate adds soft bounces to the top line. The complaint rate divides spam reports by emails delivered, which is sent minus all bounces. In a spreadsheet with sent in A2 and hard bounces in B2, the formula is =B2/A2 formatted as a percentage, or =B2/A2*100 for the number.
Platforms do not all count the same way. Amazon SES counts only hard bounces to domains you haven't verified; Smartlead divides by every lead in the campaign rather than emails sent so far, which makes an early bad batch look much smaller. Measure the strict way, hard bounces over messages actually sent, because that is closest to what the receiving mailbox providers see. The details for each platform are in bounce rate limits by platform.
What does email bounce rate mean?
Email bounce rate is the share of your emails that the receiving server refused, so they never reached a mailbox. A hard bounce is permanent: the server replies with a 5xx code such as 550 5.1.1, mailbox does not exist. A soft bounce is temporary, a 4xx code for a full mailbox or a deferral, and is usually retried. The status codes are defined in RFC 3463.
Hard bounces are the number to watch, because they say the address is dead and every platform's suspension line is written in terms of them.
What is the average email bounce rate?
It depends on whose customers are measured: GetResponse's 2024 benchmarks report puts the average at 2.33% for messages its customers sent in 2023. Other platforms either publish a much higher figure or none at all, because each counts bounces differently and covers its own customers. Our bounce rate benchmarks put every traceable figure side by side with its date.
An average is not a safe level. Klaviyo's help centre calls under 1% healthy and over 2% a problem that needs attention, which is a more useful target than any average.
Does Google or Yahoo have a bounce rate limit?
No, neither Gmail nor Yahoo publishes a bounce rate threshold. Google's Email sender guidelines and Yahoo's Sender Requirements put the number on spam complaints instead: keep the user-reported spam rate below 0.3%, and Google asks bulk senders to aim for below 0.1%. Both measure that rate against mail that reached the inbox, so it reads higher than a rate divided by everything you sent.
Bounces still matter to them. Gmail's help page on sending limits says you may be blocked from sending for up to 24 hours when "a large number" of your emails go to invalid addresses, without saying how many. A list that bounces is also usually old or bought, and the live people on it are the ones most likely to press Report spam.
What is a good email bounce rate?
Under 2%, measured honestly, keeps you under every published platform line we know of. Those lines run from 2% at Brevo to 10% at Postmark, and several large platforms, Mailchimp and Mailgun among them, enforce limits they don't publish. Above 5% you are over HubSpot's monthly line, Instantly's default auto-pause and Amazon SES's review threshold at once.
Most hard bounces come from mailboxes that no longer exist. Lists decay as people change jobs, which is why a list that bounced 1% last year can bounce 6% now without anyone touching it; the list decay calculator estimates how much. What to do after a bad send is in what to do after a high bounce rate.
Is this the same as calculating it in Excel?
The arithmetic is identical. With emails sent in A2, hard bounces in B2, soft bounces in C2 and spam complaints in D2:
| Spreadsheet formula | This calculator | |
|---|---|---|
| Hard bounce rate | =B2/A2 | Same result |
| Total bounce rate | =(B2+C2)/A2 | Same result |
| Complaint rate | =D2/(A2-B2-C2) | Same result |
| Comparison with platform limits | Look up each vendor's help page | Listed, with links |
Format the cells as percentages. The complaint rate uses delivered mail (sent minus all bounces) as the denominator, as Google and Yahoo do.
Who uses this tool, and for what?
- Cold emailers
- Check a campaign against Instantly's and other tools' auto-pause lines before they pause it for you, and decide whether the list needs verifying before the next step goes out.
- Marketers
- Turn an ESP report into hard bounce, total bounce and complaint rates on one screen, and see which platform's published line, if any, you have crossed.
- Agencies
- Give clients a number with a source behind it. Each comparison line links to the platform's own help page, which settles arguments about what "too high" means.
- Sales ops
- Audit lists from a data vendor: send a small batch, enter the bounces, and hold the vendor to the result before the full list is loaded into the CRM.
What can’t this tool tell you?
- It calculates from the numbers you enter. If your platform counts auto-replies or blocks as bounces, the rate will include them.
- The platform lines were read from each vendor's help page and can change without notice. Your own platform's current help page is the final word.
- A rate under 2% doesn't mean the list is clean. A small batch can look fine by chance, and spam traps don't bounce at all.
- It can't tell you which addresses bounced or why. For that, decode the bounce messages with the bounce message analyzer.
Common questions
- How do you calculate email bounce rate?
- Divide the number of bounced emails by the number of emails sent and multiply by 100. For example, 35 bounces from 1,000 emails sent is a 3.5% bounce rate. Most platforms' limits refer to hard bounces only, so calculate that separately from soft bounces.
- What is the email bounce rate formula in Excel?
- With emails sent in A2 and bounces in B2, use =B2/A2 and format the cell as a percentage, or =B2/A2*100 for a plain number. Add soft bounces with =(B2+C2)/A2 for the total bounce rate.
- What is an acceptable email bounce rate?
- Under 2% keeps you below every published platform limit we have found; Brevo's 2% hard bounce line is the lowest. HubSpot, Amazon SES and Instantly's default all act at 5%, and Postmark at 10%. Google and Yahoo publish no bounce percentage.
- What is the average email bounce rate?
- GetResponse's 2024 report gives 2.33% across messages its customers sent in 2023. Other platforms publish different figures or none, because they count bounces and divide by different things, so compare your rate with your platform's limit rather than an average.
- Does Google have a bounce rate limit?
- Google publishes no bounce rate percentage. Its sender guidelines set a spam complaint threshold instead: below 0.3%, ideally below 0.1%. Separately, Gmail says it can block an account from sending for up to 24 hours when a large number of messages go to invalid addresses.
- What is the difference between a hard and a soft bounce?
- A hard bounce is permanent: the mailbox or domain doesn't exist, and the address should come off your list. A soft bounce is temporary, such as a full mailbox or a server deferral, and is usually retried. Repeated soft bounces to the same address are often converted to hard bounces.
- Should bounce rate be divided by emails sent or delivered?
- Sent. A bounce rate is the share of what you sent that failed, so the denominator is everything you sent. Complaint rate is the one measured against delivered mail, because only delivered mail can be reported as spam.
- How do I lower my bounce rate?
- Remove every address that hard bounced, stop sending to old or bought lists without checking them, and verify new lists before the first send. A mailbox check asks each address's mail server whether the mailbox exists, which removes most future hard bounces before they count.
Sources
Authentication and capacity are half of deliverability.
The other half is who you send to. Every hard bounce counts against the domain and inboxes you are sending from, and nothing in DNS can tell you which addresses on your list are dead.
- Bulk verification with real SMTP mailbox checks
- Hard bounces removed before a send, not discovered after
- Catch-all, disposable and role detection on every row
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